Your first job

Sports editor (i.e. the only sports guy at the paper) at a 4K weekly covering preps. Made 24K and stayed there just over a year. Left for a a bigger paper, a daily, for more money.

 

My first job -- as an agate clerk -- lasted about four weeks before I was offered a full-time writer spot, which I snagged without hesitation.

 

First job in journalism (non-deliveryboy, non-stringer category):

- part-time prep writer/agate clerk at a 70k daily paper. Spent close to 10 years doing that at the same paper (making about $45k the last few years). Got the job the start of my junior year.
- last seven years, full-time copy editor at same paper (but circulation is around 57k daily)

If you're in an area of the country you like, you like the people you work with and the paper pays you well and offers great benefits, why look elsewhere?

 

Jim Valvano: "Never mess with happiness."

 

Still doing where I started. Just promoted to full-time (worked 3 1/2 years full-time hours, part-time pay) at 45,000-daily. Pay still sucks, benefits suck but definitely better than what I had.

I started at 17 and will celebrate 4-year anniversary right after I turn 21. I graduate from college next May and hopefully will be on my way out to somewhere bigger.

 

Two years ... got a job working half at a weekly, half at a 6-day PM daily (papers owned by same company). I thought it was a step up. Technically, I suppose, it was ... but it didn't feel like it when I left two years later for my current gig (where I've now been five years).

 

started at a 16K doing preps. learned a lot that I still use today, five years later. Left after 20 months because I hated my new boss.

 

The only problem with this whole thing is that the disparity between big areas and small areas are huge. Basically, what it means is that you are forced to work in, or near, a big city to make any money in this fucking business.

 

Started as phone-bitch in sports at my hometown 20K daily about a month before my senior year of high school started. Started college at hometown state school but never graduated (still a bit of a regret) but decided I was getting more of an education at the paper working full time than at school. July 27 will be my 7-year anniversary at the same paper having done a lot of pretty cool things mixed in with the usual preps and local D2 college. I love the area I'm living in, love the people I work with, love the people I cover and we've won a trio of APSE Top 10 daily awards. Not to mention met my girlfriend while working at the paper, so I have no real want to leave. Someday I'm going to try to move up to try something different, but at 24 I'm pretty damn happy here and I've found that that fact alone offsets the crappy pay and less than stellar hours.

 

Never had a salaried writing job, or journalism job, of any kind. The few I applied for I didn't get. So after college I spent just over a decade doing other things - security guard, janitor, painter, paper grader, phone solicitor, grocery clerk, construction work, library worker, etc., and after about five years started free-lancing.

Quit the day job and haven't made a nickel from anything but writing since 1993. There are many paths.

 

If you graduate in December, you need to get your resumes out before November. Think of all the kids who'll be graduating in December across the country. Keep ahead of the pack. Start a couple of months earlier at least, and don't be afraid to send out a ton of resumes. Read my PM.

 

Since I graduated in February...

First job out of college: Small, great weekly in rural New Hampshire

Second job out of college: Copy Editing at a New Jersey medical publishing firm

Third job out of college: TBD